Ethereum Key Miner, Chandler Guo, pushes for POW Ethereum Fork as the Network Inches toward the Merge

Chandler Guo, a Chinese key Ethereum miner, Angel investor, and adviser in Bitcoin and Ethereum startups, has started a campaign to fork the Ethereum blockchain and create an offshoot as the chain inches toward the merge. This intention was confirmed by a Twitter post he made on July 27, tagged “ethpow will coming soon (sic)”, along with screenshots and videos of messages in Mandarin where he was discussing the plan.

This movement spearheaded by Chandler Guo apparently creates resistance to Ethereum’s PoW-PoS transition and forking the Ethereum network. This process holds the potential to birth a fork of Ethereum, which Guo calls ETHPOW (according to one of his posts on Twitter).

It is, however, tantamount to a discord between ethpow and ethpos, as the Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, in an interview, has allegedly declared to shed the Proof of Work system while justifying his vision for the merge of the Ethereum Mainnet and Beacon Chain.

KEYWORDS: The Merge, Proof of Work, Proof of Stake, Ethereum, Ethereum Classic, Cryptocurrency, Blockchain


WHY CHANDLER GUO PUSHES FOR PoW ETHEREUM FORK

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The current proof of work model for Ethereum allows miners to generate ETH by investing tremendous computing power to solve challenging puzzles. With the “merge” proposed by Vitalik Buterin, this practice will be terminated and replaced with a proof of stake model, in which new ETH is generated by staking a significant amount of an already existing ETH. Unfortunately, this transition will put a stop to Ethereum mining, leaving miners stranded with expensive and possibly no longer useful hardware.

Chandler Guo aims to fork Ethereum, after the Merge, as a result of the fact that the proposed transition puts a stop to Ethereum mining, leaving Ethereum miners with expensive and worthless specialized hardware. Therefore, Guo pushes an Ethereum fork in order to maintain its Proof of Work network and to enable miners to continue generating cryptocurrency with their existing hardware.

Such a move by Guo is thus, not unprecedented: In 2016, when developers forked Ethereum trying to fix a significant breach, some purists rather stayed on the previous network, which they eventually named “Ethereum Classic” (ETC). Guo was a leading advocate for the creation of Ethereum Classic at the time, and last week, he referred back to this fact to support ETHPOW.

Ethereum Classic is planned to remain a proof of work network while the Ethereum network is pushing to transition to a proof of stake (PoS) model. Hence, Ethereum Classic will continue to use these rigs to mine its native cryptocurrency, ETC.

Guo is not new to this game; hence his campaign may not go without a long-term impact on the Ethereum network. He was involved in the Ethereum fork that produced Ethereum Classic in July 2016 and had gained enough impetus when he blatantly stated, "I fork Ethereum once, I will fork it again," in his post last week. With adequate hash power, a measure of Bitcoin mining output, and the cooperation of other miners, Guo now intends to recreate the achievement.


Possible Implication Of The Ethereum Fork

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As Ethereum inches closer to adopting proof of stake consensus, popularly known as "the merge," the community is skeptical of a miner-led fork that might affect the network.

If enough miners rebel against the merge and throw their weight behind a fork, then the long-planned Ethereum's success may be jeopardized. More so, the Ethereum network could be affected as well.
Some of the remarkable implications include;

- The Ethereum network will break into two chains: the standard Proof of Stake chain managed by Ethereum original developers and validators and the non-canonical Proof of Work version maintained by the miners. While miners cannot impede the merge, they can clone Ethereum and set up a different network where the transition never existed. The challenge now becomes whether they can convince anyone to use their forked version.

- After the merge, ETH will only be created by Proof of Stake; therefore, the cryptocurrency for the Proof of Work would not be ETH but ETHPOW.

- Even if miners are allowed to continue with the Proof of Work consensus, the ecosystem of developers and applications that provide value to the Ethereum mainnet and its ether currency will not necessarily follow the split chain. On ETH POW, the development would have to start over with smart contracts freshly deployed and maintained.

- Likewise, integral resources like stablecoins required to run operational decentralized banking apps would not be accessible on the forked Proof of Work chain. This could make the forked network less desirable to users, except if stablecoin companies opt to offer support.

- Generally, the fork would allow miners to keep operating on a proof of work clone after the Ethereum merge.

However, Ethereum developers long foresaw that miners would not well receive the merge, and to avoid their interference, these developers have taken precautions such as implementing a “difficulty bomb” that would make mining new blocks much more challenging.


About the Merge

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Ethereum will switch to proof of stake, a consensus practice that consumes a lot less energy and makes the network 99% more energy-efficient.

The Merge is the joining between Ethereum's execution layer (the Mainnet) with its new Beacon Chain proof of stake consensus layer, a really exciting step toward achieving the increased scalability, security, and sustainability goals of Ethereum. The merge would transition Ethereum's consensus protocol from proof of work (PoW) to proof of stake (PoS), and it is projected to surface within the next few months.

Developers have been working diligently on preparing Ethereum for a potential switch from proof of work to proof of stake throughout the platform’s existence. The Beacon Chain was established on December 1, 2020, and it has since functioned alongside Mainnet as a distinct chain.

Transactions on the Mainnet have not been handled by the Beacon Chain. Instead, it has agreed on active validators and their account balances in order to gain consensus on its own state. The moment for the Beacon Chain to agree on more is now approaching after lengthy testing.
Including execution layer transactions and account balances, the Beacon Chain will serve as the consensus engine for all network data following the Merge.

The Merge has gone through extensive testing and bug bounties and will go through testnets before being launched onto the Mainnet. Kevin Loo of IDEG writes; “The ‘Merge’ will have a major impact on the Ethereum ecosystem and beyond, and getting it right is more important than speed”.

At the Ethereum Conference in Paris on Thursday, co-founder of Ethereum (ETH) Vitalik Buterin presented his vision for the future of the second-largest project.

Some of the key points:
- Once the merge is complete, Ethereum will be 55 percent done.

- He added that the rate of change for the procedure is going to have to slow down at some point which makes Ethereum resemble a system that optimizes for safety and predictability, and less like an ecosystem that strives for impressing and dazzling people.

- Buterin also cautioned against adding support for many virtual machines and becoming too accustomed to tools like SNARKs (succinct non-interactive argument of knowledge), saying it is dangerous if Ethereum becomes so sophisticated that "no single individual can grasp the complete protocol".

- Vitalik believed that the emphasis should be on decentralization rather than escalating complexity.

- Buterin emphasized that switching to the Proof of Stake is "a major change" and added that there are "lots of advantages" as well.

Ethereum Classic has seen a surge of fresh attention and investment in the run-up to the merge. However, Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum’s co-founder, called ETC “totally fine” and added, “If you like Proof of Work, you should use Ethereum Classic.”


IN THE END

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Ethereum’s much-anticipated update is the combination of the current Ethereum mainnet with the Beacon Proof of Stake system. The Ethereum Classic will continue to function using the traditional mining procedure; thus, a shift to Proof of Stake would basically render miners stranded. This downside is part of the reason why all eyes are still focused on the Ethereum Classic. Nonetheless, Guo’s plan is not by any means a proven deal yet since tremendous amounts of financial and technical assistance would be needed to build and operate a new Ethereum network.

Just as Micah Zoltu, a core developer in the Ethereum network, told Decrypt, "People say all sorts of things on the internet. Until someone actually goes through the necessary work to ensure there’s a release line for the various clients and other pieces of software, I recommend just ignoring them.”







Author: Gate.io Observer: M. Olatunji
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